The part Kenny show on news talk with Marter private network during current restrictions. Don't ignore your health concerns. Our expert team is ready to help. Well, now the restaurants might be closed, but executive chef at the Market Hotel, Gareth Mullins has some ideas for that perfect St Valentine's weekend romantic dinner. Gareth, good morning and welcome.

Come on in. How's it going? Happy Friday. It's going. Happy Friday to you.

Tell us, are we going to have a starter main course dessert here?

No. So what do you think is a really nice way to dine on Valentine's Day? And it's the first Valentine's Day that we won't be walking in 20 years. Would you believe? And normally we're a very busy one for us, is I like to do couples so, you know, bring a couple of different dishes to the table and then take your time, graze over them. And as always, you've heard me saying this time and time again, but this is more important than any time.

Make sure that you have all the work done beforehand so you can actually sit down and enjoy yourself and have a nice class baubles or something before dinner. So I have four or five different of that I'm going to give you and that we can try and do nice and simply. And so I'm going to start off with one of my favorites, and that's charged with assault severity. So just buy some nice bestand lamb cutlets.

If you consider the ones that are called off the top of the lamb rack and then to make a sale severity, which is just really a green sauce, you need some garlic, Dijon mustard and some chopped mints and chopped past the few capers, a splash of olive oil and a splash of red wine vinegar. And you just chop all that up to mix it up together. So the only thing you need to do for dinner tonight, Mr Grill, to bring them to the table if you want to do that beforehand, seared them off and then you're going to pop them into the oven for three or four minutes.

So a lot of classic.

Yes, sorry, you want no, no, just that that sounds very simple, and this is only part of your what we call in our house to pick a pickoff.

Yeah, exactly. And that's what I think is the least available that you can bring to the table and then you can share it with each other. Dealer a real classic that would have to do if you are dealing with personal use problems, people. So it's not a totally classic recipe. I don't like to make it too spicy and that's just because my wife doesn't like them too spicy. And if there's ever a need to please someone that check, make sure you don't put stuff on the table that doesn't leak.

So and you need about 12 tiger prawns. So the largest oligopolies you can get, preferably the green one, sort of Rolands, hopefully cloves of garlic, a chili, some cherry tomatoes, some olive oil, a little bit of lemon, some coriander again, and a baguette that I'm going to get you to make some Cassini's else. So to make this, you just need to put a medium sized pan on the stove. And this is one of the things that is going to be done at the last minute.

So the preparation and of it can be done beforehand. But cooking the problems is at the last minute. So you're going to put on a pan and let it get warm and then three or four tablespoons of olive oil. Then you're going to add in your garlic and your chili and you're going to fry it off for about 30 seconds or so till you can smell the garlic. It got loose and aromatic. At that point, you're going to add in your tomatoes and nearly straight away you'll see those tomatoes start to break down.

And that's going to be the sauce to cook your prawns and and then simply to start in your prawns, higher up the heat a little bit sauteed them for a couple of minutes in this garlicky tomato sauce and then finish it with a squeeze of lemon juice, a little bit of coriander, and then to make those corsini French forget that you put in any supermarkets, called it into inch, inch and a half. Soy is a piece of slices, drizzle with a little bit of olive oil, popped them into the oven for like ten to twelve minutes.

So you're going to basically toast them in the oven and they're perfect on the side for mopping up all that tomato garlic sauce.

So that's no doubt that's true.

Down crispy potatoes, rosemary and parmesan and asparagus with lemon pepper, creme fresh. Yes, so the crispy the potatoes very simply, could peeling potatoes cut them into squares, popped them onto a little bit of olive oil into a preheated overnight, 180 degrees for about 25 minutes. Then you're going to take them all, season them with a little bit of salt, little bit of fresh. Rosemary popped back into the oven for 10 minutes, solid, crisp, and then just before to go to the table, give them a good grating of Parmesan cheese at the asparagus again, laid them onto the tray.

A little bit of olive oil, popped them into the oven for eight, 10 minutes just till they start to get on a little bit of color when the little bit of lemon juice onto a plate and then a lemon lemon pepper creme fresh is simply just that creme, fresh squeezed lemon juice, lots of cracked pepper hagwon, colorless been.

He says, can you ask Gareth, how can I stir fry noodles and have them tasting somewhat like they will taste from a Chinese restaurant?

Every time I cook noodles, they end up soggy or burnt onto the side of the wok. Even if I use the straight to Joaquin's that you can buy.

Yeah. The key is when you're cooking noodles, if you want them to taste like the smell, the Chinese heat. So what I would say, even if you are boiling down straight to Walkman's, they tell you to add them straight into the lock. I don't think that's a great idea. I think you can either drop them into a little bit of hot water for like three or four minutes just to loosen them up. And then we would enter the wok it small fry an egg, maybe really quickly with a little bit of sesame oil down otro in my noodles.

And I give them like what, that it's nice and hot with a little bit of oil and then you just toss them. But the key is that the walk is really, really hot if you're trying to break the noodles up during that process, just when they start on sticky.

Oh, well, now we've had some top us. What about something sweet to add to at the St. Valentine's celebration?

Yes. So we think a nice thing to do here. And this, again, is really simple and any of us out there can do this. There's no real technical skill involved here. It's to make a chocolate fondue. So what's a chocolate fondue? It's basically a hot chocolate sauce. Well, all the nice little bits and pieces that you can dip into it.

So to make the hot chocolate sauce, you're going to need 100 grams of dark chocolate that you're going to put into a bowl and sit it on a pot on the stove. It just barely simmering water underneath. It's important at the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch off the water. And now we spoke about that a few weeks ago and we spoke about making brownies. So that's just going to gently melt the chocolate. Now, on another pan, you need to add 50, 60 grams are 50 or 60 grams of and double cream.

Bring that up to just until it's about to simmer. And then a little bit of maple syrup and a splash of honey that's just going to sweeten the dark chocolate up a little bit and give it a little bit of a kick with the whiskey poured in on top of the chocolate, mix it together. So it's basically like a molten hot chocolate sauce and you're going to put that in a bowl and on the sides, whatever you like, strawberries, pineapple, little bits of biscuits and little bits of honeycomb, whatever you like to dip into chocolate and raspberries and then a skewers on the side and then off you go, the little bits into the hot chocolate sauce.

And that's a very, very simple dessert that's perfect for sharing where pressure is on you first time in 20 years having to cook the Valentine's dinner.

So I hope I never know, maybe someone to cook me developments that are underneath. Yeah, maybe. Maybe you'll tell us next week how you get on. Gareth Mullins, executive chef at the Barker Hotel, thank you very much for joining us now. And lots of interest in the matchmaker iPad. Love is not tourism. I'm Irish and my boyfriend is American. Unfortunately, due to covid, I've now not seen him since last year. If only we could have a sweetheart visa like Copenhagen so that those of us in long distance relationships can look forward to visiting the USA.

Perhaps the theCIA might have a word with President Biden reia solution for those of us separated from our loved ones when the teacher meets Joe Biden in March. That's from Katie. I met my wife and soulmate online about nine years ago, happily married, five years, two amazing kids with Linda. She's a stepmom from heaven to my eldest daughter. Couldn't have wished for anything better in life. So that's a happy ending.